Cryonics, avatars or medicine: a transhumanist's dilemma

Max More, philosopher,
transhumanist and Alcor CEO"Pretty early on I formed a very
strong idea that death was a bad thing and that just because
something was natural -- just because our bodies have evolved to
pass on our genes without really caring how long we'd last --
there's no reason to go along with that. We should fight against
it."

If de Grey and Itskov are the architects of a new future, More
is the insurance salesman making sure we get to reap the benefits
of that future. "Actually, it's really death insurance," he laughs.
He is well aware that perceptions of cryonics have been slow to
change, despite advances being made all the time. The fact is, it's
a big ask to hand over a large chunk of cash for something that
could never prove successful. It helps, says More, that generally
trusted figures like Larry King
have spoken about their desire to be cryogenically preserved -- not
all that surprising, considering his wives keep getting younger --
and More would love to see Stephen Hawking become an advocate. In
the meantime, the key is to convince people to think about cryonics
as just another extension of the medical field.

"If your heart stops beating in the street, we don't just go, 'oh
she's dead, let's bury her' -- we get emergency people along and
they do CPR or defibrillation. There's all kinds of things we can
do so that we couldn't 50 years ago, and our view is you're not
really dead until the information that makes up your personality,
that's included in your neurons and their connections, is destroyed
beyond possibility of repair."

The timeframe here is a contentious issue. Alcor has been
improving its cryoprotectant -- what More describes for us layman
as medical grade anti-freeze used to replace blood and fluids --
and bodies are now vitrified until they become thick like a block
of glass, to reduce damage. However, the point at which this
exercise becomes futile is not definitively known. An ideal
cryonics case was that of Fred Chamberlain, the Alcor co-founder who recently died with a
team of cryonics experts on hand ready to step in, but generally
the team has about 24 hours to recover a body.

Patients are placed in ice baths as soon as possible and an
airway is introduced -- a heart-lung resuscitator keeps the blood
pumping and simulates breathing to avoid further damage to the
brain. Various medications such as anticoagulants are then
introduced and the individual is put on cardiopulmonary bypass,
which also cools the body to a few degrees above water's freezing
point. Cryoprotectants are introduced and the body is cooled to
-124 degrees Celsius by fans circulating nitrogen gas.

Potential brain cell damage during this process, says More, is a
bit of a misconception -- as proven by the various stories of
individuals trapped in ice or snow later being revived with no
injury (tales he describes as "proof of principle" for
cryonics).

"It's due to reperfusion injury, it's not that the brain cells
are dying off -- it's that when the metabolism stops and you
restart it, that causes a whole chemical cascade that does a lot of
damage."

A good proportion of Alcor's members opt to only have their
brains preserved -- the argument being, once technology is advanced
enough to effectively revive the 100 billion neurons that make up
the organ, piecing a body together (whether through regeneration or
robotics) will seem easy by comparison.

We cannot now know, however, what damage is being doing to the
brain during the cooling process.

"You just have to see how a very simple trauma can affect
somebody's personality, and we're talking about preserving the
brain en masse here," Mark Morrison, CEO of Glasgow's Institute of
Nanotechnology, told the Metro.

Considering recent studies, such as Rice University's find that the introduction of specially engineered
nanoparticles to injured brains can reverse damage, nanotechnology
could be the key to regenerating brain activity -- but there are no
guarantees an individual would come back the same. As such, Alcor
is looking into storing its client's Facebook pages to help revived individuals reconstruct
memories.

By his own admission, More thought we'd already be well on our
way to de Grey's 1,000-year mark -- but progress has been too slow,
so cryonics must be considered. The oldest person to have ever
lived, Jeanne
Calment, only made it to 122 -- and that was in 1997. An
impressive feat, but not how More wants to go down.

Wired Cryonics is the most viable possibility to extend life
available today. One of the most significant developments in this
field has been vitrification, where a cryoprotectant was developed
that dramatically reduced freezing damage in patients.

Tired
The outcome of Cryonics procedures are still unknown. Its real
success relies heavily on future technologies that are capable
of repairing cellular damage in cryonics patients. But I
suppose if you have a spare £125,000 for full body lying
around, it's worth a go.

Comments

Loving all the typos, keep up the great literary work.

Margie

Sep 8th 2012

Don't particularly care for how good an article is in terms or spelling and grammar, this piece is more than readable. That's all that matters for me when reading science articles, good job, loved the read. Now, on to finding £125k as a last resort if the rest fails to come to fruition...

Jamie

Sep 9th 2012

The article lies.

Cryonics is a LOT cheaper than it makes out. Head only cryo is $30,000 up front. And if you are young, by the miracle of insurance and compound interest you only actually end up paying about $10,000 as far as I remember. And even that is only as an insurance that sets you back something like £1 a day.

My figures are probably not exact since I haven't bothered to look them up, but the bottom line is that the AVERAGE person in the UK can comfortably afford cryonics.

rationalist

Sep 9th 2012

In reply to rationalist

i'm all for cryonics! i am part of LEF and cryonics institute since 2002 and am having my whole body "frozen" when the time comes. To me it's not the cost of it and my life insurance will take care of it:) i find it to be better than the burnt or buried option.